Winter Storm Watch for Harris, TX

… WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY EVENING…

AN ARCTIC AIRMASS WILL SETTLE OVER THE AREA ON MONDAY DROPPING TEMPERATURES TO AROUND FREEZING TO WELL BELOW FREEZING BY TUESDAY MORNING. AN UPPER LEVEL DISTURBANCE WILL MOVE TOWARD THE REGION FROM THE SOUTHWEST HELPING TO INITIATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREEZING RAIN… SLEET AND SNOW. THIS WINTER PRECIPITATION SHOULD CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE DAY AND TAPER OFF FROM NORTHWEST TO SOUTHEAST BY EVENING. SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF AROUND AN INCH WITH SOME ISOLATED HIGHER TOTALS WILL BE POSSIBLE MAINLY NORTH OF A BRENHAM TO CONROE TO COLDSPRING LINE. FUTHER SOUTH… THE PRECIPITATION SHOULD BE A MIX OF FREEZING RAIN AND SLEET… POSSIBLY CHANGING TO SNOW TOWARD EVENING.

And as if it wa…wa…wasn’t bad enough th…th…that I’m dealing with the full m…m…monty of actual No…no…northern type winter weather, s…s…someone apparently wants t…t…to turn Impish into an ice sculpture!

Wind Chill Warning for Miami, IN

Issued by The National Weather Service North Webster, IN Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 1:07 PM EST

* WIND CHILLS WILL BE 15 BELOW TO 25 BELOW ZERO THIS AFTERNOON… FALLING TO 25 BELOW TO 35 BELOW BY THIS EVENING.THESE DANGEROUS WIND CHILLS WILL CONTINUE INTO TUESDAY… WITH SLOW IMPROVEMENT TUESDAY NIGHT AND WEDNESDAY.

IMPACTS…

* DANGEROUS WIND CHILLS ARE IMMINENT TODAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY. FROSTBITE OF EXPOSED SKIN CAN OCCUR IN A MATTER OF MINUTES IN THESE CONDITIONS. HYPOTHERMIA OR EVEN DEATH IS POSSIBLE WITH PROLONGED EXPOSURE OR DEATH FOR THOSE NOT PROPERLY DRESSED FOR THE COLD.

S…s…so you’ll just have t..t…to understand if I s…s…say we’re t…t…too cold to ch…ch…chat this mor…mor…morning.

Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he’d just been run over by a train.His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised and he’s walking with a limp “What happened to you?” asks Sean, the bartender.” Jamie O’Conner and me had a fight,” says Paddy.“That little shit, O’Conner,” says Sean, “He couldn’t do that to you, He must have had something in his hand.”“That he did,” says Paddy, “a shovel is what he had, And a terrible lickin’ he gave me with it.”” Well,” says Sean, “you should have defended yourself, Didn’t you have something in your hand?” That I did,” said Paddy, “Mrs. O’Conner’s breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but bloody useless in a fight.”

Ok so maybe snow men are not bigger in Texas, but then again there aren’t supposed to be any

snow men in the southern part of Texas at all!

70,000 Healthcare.gov users are exposed to hackers

The government’s insurance exchange website Healthcare.gov has been fraught with problems since the beginning. Now we know those flaws include security.

David Kennedy, the expert who founded TrustedSec, recently testified to Congress that up to 70,000 users’ personal info could be stolen using simple Google Search techniques. This data includes names, addresses and user names.

Moreover, he found much more fundamental problems in the website’s code that could let hackers spoof links coming from the site. As of now, none of the issues has been responded to by the site’s developers or the government.

Frosty Impish Dragon, knew the sun would be hot that day,so he said, “Let’s run, and we’ll prank some fun now, before it melts away.”

Down to the village, with a cane clutched in his hand,limping here and there, all around the square, sayin’, “Catch me if you can.”

He led them down the streets of town, and jaywalked before the traffic cop;and only paused a moment, when he heard him holler, “Stop!”

For Frosty, Impish Dragon, had outstanding warrants and had to hurry on his way,But he waved goodbye, sayin’ “Don’t cry, I’ll be back again some day.”

Poll: Is the U.S. partnered in a secret side deal with Iran over its nuclear program?

Yes (94%)No (3%)Undecided (1%)Other 0 (0%)

Poll courtesy of The Washington Post

Yeah ok so what you say. I see this all winter? Well, that’s my back yard and it sits not

50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico!

U.S. pilot scares off Iranians with ‘Top Gun’-worthy stunt

The U.S. Air Force has a message for Iran: Don’t mess with our drones.

In what only can be described as a scene out of Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun,” Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, Air Force chief of staff, describes how F-22 stealth jets scared off Iranian jets from a U.S. drone flying in international airspace.

The Aviationist reports that in March a U.S. MQ-1 drone came close to being intercepted by an Iranian F-4 Phantom combat plane, but the Iranian aircraft stopped short after a warning by an American pilot.

“He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home,’” Gen. Welsh said.

According to The Aviationist, the Iranians came within 16 miles of the drone.

…and inches of crapping their flight suits!

When I heard the news that there would be no tailgating allowed at the Super Bowl this year, I literally gasped out loud and my heart started palpitating. It is so wrong, on so many levels to ban tailgating at Super Bowl. The two go hand in hand, so how could you even call it a “Super Bowl” without the presence of grills and tents in the parking lot? To me, it’s un-American to not tailgate, especially at a Super Bowl game.

Here is the officially statement from the dumb ass, president and CEO of the NY/NJ Super Bowl Host Committee, Al Kelly, “You will be allowed to have food in your car and have drink in you car. And provided you’re in the boundaries of a single parking space, you’ll be able to eat or drink right next to your car. However you’re not going to be able to take out a lounge chair, you’re not going to be able to take out a grill and you’re not going to be able to take up more than one parking space.”

If I had a pickup truck, I would just setup my tailgate spread in the bed of the truck, technically I am still in my car. We already have the purse ban, now the tailgate ban, I wonder what’s next to go in the pursuit of stripping fans of every dollar possible?

Last week we did the main items for your spread. Here now are some snack & dip recipes

Heat oil in large nonstick skillet. Cook chicken balls, in batches, 3 to 4 min. or until lightly browned, turning after 2 min. Drain on paper towels. (Note: Balls will not be done but will finish cooking in oven.) Place in 15x10x1-inch pan sprayed with cooking spray.

Shortcut

Omit oil. Shape chicken mixture into meatballs and coat with hot sauce mixture and crumbs as directed; place in 15x10x1-inch pan sprayed with cooking spray. Bake at 375°F for 30 to 35 min. or until done, turning after 15 min.(Spraying the coated balls lightly with cooking spray will help insure crispness and browning)

Substitute

Prepare using ground turkey.(Use the dark meat ground turkey its cheaper and has more flavor for this)

Use Your Microwave

Mix dip ingredients as directed; spread onto bottom of shallow microwaveable dish. Microwave on HIGH 2 to 3 min. or until heated through. Serve as directed.

Substitute Pita chips for Rye Cracker or Party Bread

Beer-Infused Hot Dog Bites

Prep Time:20 min

Total Time:20 min

Makes: 16 servings, 2 topped crackers each

What You Need

4 hot dogs, each cut diagonally into 8 slices

½ cup beer

32 RITZ Crackers

4 slices (0.8 oz. each) pepper Jack cheese, each cut into 8 pieces

4 tsp. grainy Dijon mustard

Make It

Heat oven to 350°F.

Spray medium nonstick skillet with cooking spray; heat on medium-high heat. Add hot dog slices; cook 1 min. on each side or until each is browned on both sides. Stir in beer; cook 5 min. or until beer is cooked off.

Arrange crackers in single layer on parchment-covered baking sheet; top with hot dogs and cheese.

Bake 2 to 3 min. or until cheese is melted. Top with mustard. Serve warm.

Make Ahead

Hot dog slices can be cooked ahead of time. Refrigerate up to 24 hours. Remove from refrigerator about 30 min. before using as directed.

Make Ahead

Prepare dip as directed except do not top with remaining cheese sauce and sour cream; spoon into airtight container. Refrigerate up to 24 hours. Remove from refrigerator 30 min. before serving. Stir dip; spoon into microwaveable dish. Microwave on HIGH 5 min. or until heated through, stirring after 3 min. Drizzle with remaining cheese sauce; top with sour cream.

Nutrition Information Per Serving:

Tip:

To easily drizzle the cheese sauce heat it 30 seconds at a time in the microwave stirring in between heatings until the correct consistency is achieved. Use the spoon to do your drizzling for best results

Michael Moore breaks from left to decry Obamacare as ‘awful’

Michael Moore, the Hollywood legend of liberal mindset and pro-Democratic documentary, has broken from the party line to criticize Obamacare, calling both its rollout and provisions “awful.”

He made the assessment in a written piece to The New York Times, saying that it was high time liberals came forward and admitted the obvious.

“That is the dirty little secret many liberals have avoided saying out loud for fear of aiding the president’s enemies at a time when the ideal of universal health care needed all the support it could get,” Mr. Moore wrote. But the truth is this, he added: “Obamacare is awful.”

But his reasons were hardly those of conservative views.

Rather, he said the health care plan was actually pro-insurance industry, and that President Obama knew that the better path for reform was a single-payer system that simply provided Medicare for everybody, Mediaite reported.

Cannibal Rat-Infested Ghost Ship Headed For The UK?

Experts believe an unmanned, missing Russian cruise ship might be making an unexpected landing in Europe soon. The crew of the Lyubov Orlova deserted the ship after it was impounded over unpaid debts in Newfoundland in 2010. Two years later, the Canadian government was towing it to scrap in the Dominican Republic. When the towline broke in heavy North Atlantic seas, the Canadian government decided to just let her go. After several recent storms have hit the North Atlantic, experts now fear that the ghost ship might be heading for landfall in Ireland, Scotland or the southern tip of England. And that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that the ship is probably carrying horrible cannibal rats.

Why don’t we just tow it into Somali waters and let the Somali Pirates board it? We’d get rid of two problems at the same time!

Victory for religious group in Affordable Care case

Supreme Court extends injunction for Catholic charity run by nuns

(CNN) – Some religious affiliated nonprofits will remain temporarily exempt from requirements in the Affordable Care Act to cover birth control and other reproductive health coverage they oppose for religious reasons.

That is the result of a Supreme Court decision on Friday that extended an injunction for a Catholic charity run by nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The exemption stands while the case is being considered by the lower courts. It is a clear victory for the religious group and its insurer.

In a once-sentence order, the Supreme Court said the Obama administration could not enforce the requirement if the group tells the Health and Human Services Department in writing that it is a non-profit that holds “themselves out as religious and have religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services.”

Although the high order applies specifically to the Little Sisters of the Poor, which run several homes for the elderly nationwide, it will likely have the practical effect of keeping the federal government from forcing other religious nonprofits that raised similar objections to comply with the mandate.

The mandates were designed by the administration to give women employed at nonprofit, religious-based organizations — such as certain hospitals and private faith-based universities — the ability to receive contraception through separate health policies with no co-pay.

The sticking point was a requirement those groups sign a government self-certification form that would allow third-party administrators to provide the contraception coverage.

The White House had said the administration was confident the rules “strike the balance of providing women with free contraceptive coverage while preventing nonprofit religious organizations with religious objections to contraceptive coverage from having to contract, arrange, pay, or refer for such coverage.”

But religious-based groups sought delays around the employer-contraception requirement, saying signing the form would force them “to choose between onerous penalties or becoming complicit in a grave moral wrong.”

The justices in their unsigned order concluded: “To meet the condition for injunction pending appeal, applicants need not use the form prescribed by the government and need not send copies to third-party administrators.”

The case is Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius (13a691).

I have been following this case with great interest Not only because of its potential slap in the face to Obama and his ill conceived legacy of socialist medicine & crushing debit, but for the separation of church and state implications as well, for reasons we have never quite been able to discover or understand the Founding Fathers spoke about it, obviously believed in but didn’t see fit to include in the constitution. This has led down thru our history to numerous ‘brushing’ incidents when the two sides of the coin rub each other the wrong way. It has also led to a great deal of hypocrisy on the part of Religion who apparently believes this protection works only in one direction, specifically in their favor.

I believe firmly in and fought for the separation of church and state for multiple reasons. The right to worship the god of our choice and in the manner we chose is an important freedom. Secondly it is one of the things which prevents us from ever becoming an Islamic state. Finally, it (in theory anyhow) protects me from having the tenants and beliefs of a religion I might not necessarily subscribe to or follow force their dogma on me by passing laws based on their religious beliefs which I then am forced to obey.

From where I sit it would seem the (in particular Catholic) Church

just loves to interpret and bend this precept to their advantage at

every opportunity. They used it to shield pedophile priests for

decades claiming only they had jurisdiction over them. They use it

to justify their refusal to be considered corporations (thereby

avoiding paying federal taxes) or being designated a Special Interest

Lobby so they do not have to follow inconvenient (to their aims)

laws there too. They even tried to use it as a shield against being

held accountable to labor laws where lay personnel were

concerned, this particular subject being a case in point for that.

However just let the Government make a single comment about their abuse of Separation of Church & State and the keening, caterwauling and carrying on makes listening to the wail of the Banshee preferable!

Now once more they want to play the Separation card and be exempt due to religious convictions from providing Government mandated Healthcare because they find a tiny portion of it unacceptable (we’re not even going to get into how the concept that this is a democracy – a form of government where the will of the majority rules and how this fact is being blatantly ignored by the Church). I’m sorry but I was raised and taught that God believed in and represented free will. in all things including worship of him and our choice to sin against him or not. I was also raised to believe that my sins were between him and I no other, that the church was merely there for me to turn to for guidance and help NOT to be the Catholic version of the Sharia Police or a Religious second government with our Democratic one.

free will

noun

noun: free will; noun: freewill

1.

the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.

I’m just guessing mind you but it seems that the Church feels that this long held belief of both God and our Founding Fathers doesn’t apply to them either.

Finally the thing I find most laughably hypocritical of all about this, is that while the Church concentrates on removing birth control from things its forced to pay for that every other employer of lay people in the united states is now subject to paying for (despite there being 2 or 3 other legitimate medical reasons for its use other than the prevention of Contraception) they are not objecting in the least to their insurance paying for three other conception altering medical procedures!One of those is irreversibly permanent and the other two’s reversibility is at best a coin toss. Those apparently are ok, but a pill whose contraception effect ceases in as little as a week after stopping them is a huge offense.

You know it occurs to me that back in 1949 when George Orwell published “1984” everyone assumed that the Big Brother he was portraying was limited to the Government. At the time nobody saw the camel’s nose of the Church intruding into their lives, likely because they had been doing it for over 1900 years by then. However in 2014 when we talk about Big Brother we need a Roman God Janus like figure with one side a McCarthy era Politician and the other a Spanish Inquisition robed monk!

Funny how Separation of Church and State converge and agree that your private lives are their business isn’t it?

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About lethalleprechaun

I believe in being the kind of man who, when my feet touch the floor in the morn', causes the Devil to say "BUGGER ME! HIMSELF IS UP!"
========
I'm a White Married Heterosexual who fervently believes in the war(s) we are fighting, the Second Amendment which I plan on defending with my last breath and my last round of ammunition as well as Arizona's stringent law on Immigration and the need for the border wall.
I'm a right of center Con-centrist with Tea Party & Republican sympathies who drives an SUV. I am a Life Time Member of the NRA, a Charter Member of the Patriots' Border Alliance and North American Hunters Association. If there is a season for it and I can shoot one I'll eat it and proudly wear its fur. I believe PETA exists solely to be a forum for Gays, Vegetarians, Hollywood snobbery to stupid to get into politics and Soybean Growers.
The ACLU stopped protecting our civil liberties sometime after the 1960s and now serves its own bigoted headline grabbing agenda much in the same way as the Southern Poverty Law Center. I am ecstatic that WE the PEOPLE finally got mad enough to rise up and take back the Government from WE the ENTITLED and reverently wish the Liberals would just get over the loss and quit whining/protesting all the time. After all they're just reaping what they've sown.
I am Pro-choice both when it comes to the issue of abortion AND school prayer. I believe in a government for the people, by the people which represents and does the people's will. Therefore I an Pro States rights and mandatory term limits but against special interest group campaign contributions and soft money. I think that sports teams who allow their players to sit or take a knee during the National Anthem should be boycotted until the message is received that this is not acceptable behavior for role models for children.
I believe Congressional salaries should be voted on bi-annually by the people they represent and not by themselves. I think Congress should be subject to every law they pass on the populace including any regarding Social Security or Healthcare. Speaking of the Healthcare bill (or con job as I see it) I hope Trump will overturn it and set things back to normal.
I oppose the building of an Mosque or ANY Islamic center at or within a 10 mile radius of Ground Zero in New York. I will fight those in favor of this until hell freezes over and then I will continue to fight it hand to hand on the ice. Further I think the ban on immigrants from certain nations known to harbor and promote terrorism is a justified measure, at least until we can come up with better methods of vetting and tracking those non citizens we allow in the country. We did not inflict this measure on them those who refuse to point out, denounce or fight radical religious terrorism brought this upon themselves.

4 Responses to Leprechaun Laughs # 230 for Jan 29th 2014

YOU used the words ‘radical Islam’ I NEVER said those two words together in relation to each other! In point of fact the word ‘radical’ never appears in my entire Parting Shot.

I strongly suspect you’re one of those narrow minded but wide open mouthed moral minority bead warriors who love to make presumptions about peoples destinations in the here after based on whither or not their beliefs & point of view coincide with you narrowly held ones.

Sorry you don’t care for my assertions about the Church or their religious right bead warriors. Maybe it stung a little I don’t know but I’m not the only person making these comparisons or expressing these views. I’m just one of the few not getting paid for it & sans a newspaper’s protection who is being attacked and criticized for dragging it out of the incense shrouded shadows and calling attention to it. See I swore an oath to protect this country from all enimies foreign AND DOMESTIC.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the DEMOCRACY(?) for which it stands…” No, not a democracy, but a republic. Under a republic, the majority does not have the right to dictate to the minority, in a democracy, it does.

Ok you caught me making a technically inaccurate statement here. It is a very confusing issue for most people because we use a democratic process to elect members to a Republic governing body to represent your concerns interests and intentions who themselves in turn again use the democratic process to arrive at a conscientious regarding the laws which govern us and (at least in the Founding Fathers theoretical beliefs) represents the will of the majority of We the People.

By popular usage, however, the word “democracy” come to mean a form of government in which the government derives its power from the people and is accountable to them for the use of that power. In this sense the United States might accurately be called a democracy.

Many people are under the false impression our form of government is a democracy, or representative democracy. This is of course completely untrue. The Founders were extremely knowledgeable about the issue of democracy and feared a democracy as much as a monarchy. They understood that the only entity that can take away the people’s freedom is their own government, either by being too weak to protect them from external threats or by becoming too powerful and taking over every aspect of life.

They knew very well the meaning of the word “democracy”, and the history of democracies; and they were deliberately doing everything in their power to prevent having a democracy.

In a Republic, the sovereignty resides with the people themselves. In a Republic, one may act on his own or through his representatives when he chooses to solve a problem. The people have no obligation to the government; instead, the government is a servant of the people, and obliged to its owner, We the People. Many politicians have lost sight of that fact.

A Constitutional Republic has some similarities to democracy in that it uses democratic processes to elect representatives and pass new laws, etc. The critical difference lies in the fact that a Constitutional Republic has a Constitution that limits the powers of the government. It also spells out how the government is structured, creating checks on its power and balancing power between the different branches.

The goal of a Constitutional Republic was to avoid the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy but what exists in America today is a far cry from the Constitutional Republic our forefathers brought forth.

In the strictest sense of the word, the system of government established by the Constitution was never intended to be a “democracy.” This is evident not only in the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance but in the Constitution itself which declares that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” (Article IV, Section 4). Moreover, the scheme of representation and the various mechanisms for selecting representatives established by the Constitution were clearly intended to produce a republic, not a democracy.

The USA has moved away from its republican roots and become more “democratic,” it has strayed from the intentions of the Constitution’s authors. Whether or not the trend toward more direct democracy would be smiled upon by the Framers depends on the answer to another question. Are the American people today sufficiently better informed and otherwise equipped to be wise and prudent democratic citizens than were American citizens in the late 1700s? By all accounts, the answer to this second question is an emphatic “no.”

It was my opinion however that to make the technically correct distinction which you pointed out, followed by the requisite Civics 101 Lesson I have assembled here from multiple sources, would have been lost on most, confusing to many and served only to detract from the point I was attempting to make about the few attempting to impose their will on the many.

Perhaps I should have said I would not address the attempt by the Church to dictate law via the use of ‘Mobocracy’. Today we have DO have a mobocracy occurring in our streets all across America. Sadly, such mobocracy or ‘mob rule’ was endorsed and encouraged by Sen. John McCain who praised the recent wave of pro-illegal immigration demonstrations by saying . . . “if the protesters hang tough they will succeed in forcing Congress to liberalize immigration laws. If such demonstrations continue, I think we will have a bill for the President to sign soon . . . The more debate, the more demonstrations, the more likely we will prevail.’ He was of course referring to the Senate’s massive illegal-alien amnesty bill S. 2611 which did in fact, pass. Was S. 2611 passed to appease the mob? If so, it is a perfect example of rule by mobocracy! Others have heeded his words and begun using the same tactics. For the Church however this tactic is nothing new they have been using it to affect the changes they want for centuries when other avenues fail them.